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139 responses to “Index of entries”

Ben,
This was fun but some entries really surprised me, perhaps because I grew-up hearing Scotland-born grandparents and their kids (e.g. my dad) using tin, bin, keen, veg, cheers (and “cheerio” as good-bye), daft, dodgy, fishmonger and a coffee (and similarily “a tea”) as part of everyday conversation. I think I do as well but never thought it anything but normal.

More clearly Scot but still used a lot at home were wee, lass, laddie, bonnie, dram…

One Britishism not on your list that I’m hearing lately is “tosser.” Not sure exactly how it relates to wanker.

Hey…what about “collect”? As in, “I need to collect Rover from the vet.” I wrote “collect” in an email to my husband the other day and he wasn’t sure what I meant. FYI I lived in England in the late 80s and some things stuck with me for a long time, e.g. kitchen roll. It took me a while to remember that kitchen roll = paper towel. Other words/phrases that stuck with me…bin, went missing, on the dole, cheers, and a few others I can’t remember this second.

My British colleagues were curious about “getting canned”. They were disappointed it meant “to be fired or made redundant”; they were thinking it had a sexual connotation :). I personally like the term “made redundant”…wish we used it here.

Rachel- “made redundant” is not exactly the same as being fired; it’s a precise legal term- it means that your *position* is no longer required, It would then be against the law to hire someone else to do the same job,
People say “I’ve been made redundant”, but that’s not technically correct- it’s the *job* that’s redundant (and the person leaving must be compensated, at least to a minimum scale (and often much more),

One I heard on a radio program this morning: bouncy castle, which I always translate into “moon bounce”, whether it looks like a castle or not. There are phrases that I imagine are so daft or so twee that no American would ever use them and yet I am so very often surprised.

A nonstarter is any idea or project which never gets off the ground, in fact never makes it beyond the planning/discussion state, usually because of one crucial lack or flaw. ‘Moving to London with insufficient money for rent was a nonstarter for Jill and Ian.’ It never got any farther than the planning stage…it was impractical, un-do-able.

I couldn’t find an address to make general suggestions for noobs, so this thread seems appropriate.
I came across the term “fair cop” in the blog of Brad DeLong, economics professor at Berkeley. I always thought this was quintessential Cockney (“Fair cop, guv!”= “You caught me fair and square, boss”). Is this in fact common in US English as well?

PS I am continually delighted, surprised and sometimes a little nonplussed to see terms that I thought were universal English are in fact noobs.

I don’t know what ‘wang’ means where you are, but here in England the term ‘wang’ usually refers to the male genetalia. I’m also unsure as to the term doris meaning a married woman specifically, it would normally be the case that your mother might be reffered to as the ‘old dorothy’ or ‘old dot’ and some may refer to their wives as ‘doris’ in latter years.

In Scotland the expression is similar but for little we use wee and it’s normally used in the context of a guy over 6ft, “awwright wee man?” or if someone is of slight height we use, yip, you guessed it, big man, “awwright there big man?”

What a joy to find this site. I’m British and have been living in NYC for 14 years now, but still find myself amazed at the differences in our use of a common language. One of my favorite jobs was as a copy editor for an American-edited English-language newspaper in Moscow in the early 90s. Our readership included many nationalities, including British and American expats. Though not really NOOBs, my two favorite catches in articles written by fantastic young American journalists were:
“She walked down the runway, showing flashes of fanny through the thigh-high slits in her skirt,” and, just a few weeks later, “The typical image of a Conservative minister sitting at his desk in suspenders.”
Left unedited, neither of these would have made suitable reading in a daily paper for our British readers. “Fanny,” a harmless reference to buttocks in the US, means “vagina” in British slang. “Suspenders” refers to a garter belt in the UK. (Brits say “braces.” Though perhaps “suspenders” would have been more appropriate for a few Conservative ministers at that time.)

Have you seen the famous bit of TV when Fanny and Johnny Craddock were on their cookery show? She’d been demonstrating how to make doughnuts.
During the sign-off, Johnny piped up “Goodbye, and I hope all your doughnuts turn out like Fanny’s”. 🙂

Annie – when they talk about a minister in suspenders – they’re talking about him being dressed in women’s clothing for sexual gratification! “Suspenders” is never used unqualified to refer to something to hold up socks – for the half-dozen people in the UK that use them (all over 80, I suspect), they would be “sock-suspenders” or more likely, “garters”. The image was intended to be satirical (there’s a widespread belief that despite the Conservatives constantly banging on about “family values”, that there are some very odd goings-on in high places.

Heres a few:
“bumming a fag” -begging for a cigarette,
“thats pants” -thats not great,
“nicking” -taking things without asking / stealing, so you could also “nick a fag”. Stop that sniggering in the back row!

In some parts of England I was once told that “a couple” could mean 3, bit like a bakers dozen being 13 maybe. The “Happy Couple” has some interesting connotations there…

‘hanger left/ right’ i.e. turn left or right especially when giving driving directions
In north east England ‘wife’ means any female above teenage/ early 20s years
‘the dogs bollocks’- top quality, brilliant
‘brass monkey weather’ from the phrase ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’, possibly derived from a navy contraption to stack cannon balls

One word that needs to be added here is “quite.” In British English “quite” means “sort of,” even, ironically, “not very.” It does not have the quality of strongly intensifying meaning as it has, or can have, in the USA.

It can have the intensifying meaning. So the meaning of “I am quite exhausted” could be “I am slightly exhausted” or “I am completely exhausted”, depending on how you say it. But I think the latter would be considered old-fashioned usage in the UK.

Great blog – I’d second the use of “quite” as a quasi-NOOB, since Americans seem to use it differently than the Brits. One term I’ve noticed popping up on my Facebook is “ace.” It’s become common for random & unconnected friends to post “that’s ace” or something similar. Just a thought.

Also worth a mention is ‘Lush’ a term used mainly in South Wales & the West Country it means something that is good, great, attractive & can describe how some one looks, how something tastes or to describe a situation. I use it at least once a day!

I have come across a term that was very puzzling at first- “chuffed.” It sounds to me as it should mean upset when it apparently means just the opposite. I hear it from time to time on television shows from England.

How about “doing sums”? Hasn’t been used much in the US in the past century, but then yesterday’s NYT had “Mr. Day-Lewis prepared for the part not by splitting rails or doing sums on the back of a shovel but mostly by reading.”

The use of Tarmac by Americans refering to the runway bothers me it is a British company trade-name for asphalt as Macadam and Coldprovia was onced used in the USA. most Americans think thet come across as world travelers when they use it.

I tried to correct a friend in the States who often claimed to be “pissed” when she was annoyed. I said the correct terminology is “pissed-off” as in the UK to be pissed is to be drunk. And it is “chips” not “french fries”…..

PS: congrats at your receiving coverage in a UK newspaper which is how I found this blog.

One Britishism I picked up in England and South Africa was telling someone, when he’d helped you with a small favor— like, say, a waiter fetching you a wedge of lemon for your tea— was, “Oh, you’re a star!” I still say it in the USA.

A “parking garage” would generally be under cover, yes? That’s one sort of car park, but it’s a broader term. Most car parks are outdoors – just a flat open space with marked bays. The other main type is the multi-storey car park – closer to what I understand by “parking garage”.

Having a ball reading all these. I’m U.S.-born-and-raised, but an unabashed fan of Shakespeare, Monty Python, J.K. Rowling, et al. As a scientist, I was moved to run some statistics. I categorized the 144 terms above as follows: 44 that I regularly use in my own speech without the least hint of irony; 86 I would be perfectly comfortable using in context, around Brits, or tongue-in-cheek; 32 I would immediately understand, but wouldn’t tend to use myself; and 21 I honestly hadn’t heard before. (The remaining 14, I couldn’t classify without looking at the actual articles to make sure I had the sense of them right, and I don’t have time at the moment.)

“I’m all right, Jack!” An old English phrase suggesting how many Britons are, frustratingly, too proud to open up or to seek help or to admit problems. An expression of pride (and sometimes unwillingness to help others)

As a Brit I have always understood this to signify selfishness. Often used to refer to the behaviour of someone else who is unwilling to do something about a problem because it does not affect them personally. Perhaps Americans would say “Not my problem!”?

“I’m alright Jack” is also the title of a really (really!!) funny Brit movie with Peter Sellers in his first star role as a trade union overseer.
It is a comedy about management-men relations. A classic line from Sellers:-“We cannot accept incompetency (sic) as a reason for dismissal. That is victimisation”.
If you see it in a dvd bin-get it!

“What it says on the tin”: meaning, there is no discrepancy between what a product is labeled as, and what it does. Can be used when a tin can is not even involved, as with software. Can imply that there will be “no surprises” or maybe that something will be “turnkey”. Kind of like the American “WYSIWYG”: “What you see is what you get.”

Brits know what a “tannoy” is: an outdoor speaker mounted at, say, a train station or sports arena. e.g. “She was so surprised to hear her name paged over the tannoy.” This is an example of a commercial brand trademark– the audio hardware firm Tannoy— slowly becoming a generic noun for any kind of public loudspeaker.

I’ve been watching the two excellent British TV serials, HAPPY VALLEY and LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX, both set in modern semi-rural West Yorkshire. Those shows are just choc-a-bloc (another English term!) with wonderful old English words and phrases! Scriptwriter Sally Wainwright really knows how to capture all that language in its proper context.

“In Cloud Cuckoo-Land”. When a person is not thinking rationally or practically. I hear it especially used in regard to the politically correct brigade of England’s “Loony Left”. ie., teachers who propose teaching sex and birth-control to 8-yr-olds…

Being made redundant is a specific legal situation- it’s not just being fired.
If you “are made redundant”, it means that the employer is saying that the *job* is redundant – they can’t sack you and then take someone else on to do the same work. They also have to pay you – depending on length of service, it can be a substantial amount (e.g. my girlfriend has worked for the same company for nearly 25 years – if made redundant, it would cost them around $100K. That’s more than the statutory minimum – but even that is substantial after 25 years).

Anyone that sells alcohol must be licensed- you can either have an “on-licence” (to sell alcohol to be consumed *on* the premises) or an “off-licence” (to sell alcohol to be consumed *off* the premises) – or both, in the case of some pubs.

Distemper is rather basic thin paint -for wallpaper etc.
A dimplex is a small semi-portable oil-filled electric radiator. Presumably the joke is that it is flat, solid, and with no space for penetrations-quite unshaggable in fact!

Bugger/ohh bugger/bugger me – still seen by my gran as THEE worse swear word in history – but have heard it used quite a lot in American shows recently (last time I heard it was on the Simpsons last week when Homer called Bart a ‘bugger’) as we all know, buggery is anal penetration for sexual gratification

Interesting re “his name is” / “he’s called.” In England there are regional variations regarding usage here. As a south Londoner, I’d say “His name is James but he’s called Jim.” But when I lived in the north-east (Sunderland), people would say “He’s called James” meaning that that was his name.

Two British-isms that have yet to take hold here (thankfully) are “minutes time” and the over use of “absolutely” as absolutely bonkers, …crap, …spot on etc. etc.
If they did, I’d go absolutely bonkers in a minutes time.

‘mutton dressed as lamb’ : A rather meanspirited remark one might make, sotto voce, about a middle-aged woman trying to dress in some tight or revealing or super-trendy fashion, best worn by a woman in her teens or twenties.

Blowsy. A word used to describe women of a certain age whose once voluptuous charms are beginning to suffer from the insidious effects of gravity.
Originally used by rose-growers to describe a flower in between it looking at its best and the petals dropping off.

Harvest Festivals.
A term used to describe clothing worn by women who wish to hide their physical charms, or to hide the fact that they are losing them.
Popularised in the classic ’70s Britcom ‘Rising Damp’:
Rigsby (the landlord who lusts after Miss Jones) to his tenant Allen: “How’s Miss Jones tonight?
Allen: Oh you’ll get nowhere with her. She’s wearing her ‘harvest festivals’
Rigsby: Harvest festivals-what are they?
Allen: All is safely gathered in!

I don’t believe that Eric Chappell (scriptwriter) would have known the phrase from his upbringing in Lincolnshire. After all, it’s not the most humorous of counties!.
I suspect it’s a Liverpudlian expression which was picked up by a man with an acute ear for such things.

Embarrassed to recall my first trip to the US in the 80’s as a sweet and innocent young female legal bod. I was staying at a posh Manhattan hotel to attend an early morning signing ceremony for a big acquisition that had some very famous VIPs in attendance. One of the lawyers was a very loud New Yorker who was seen as a bit of a legend and, by chance, he was put in the room next to mine. The night before, nervous I might sleep through my alarm, I asked him to make sure I was up and about when he went down to the ceremony. Needless to say he didn’t, and I came down a few minutes after the others. The Chairman asked me if I had got lost and I explained rather loudly (just as there was an unfortunate hush in the background), that I had been expecting the lawyer to swing by my room to knock me up. I had no idea why this statement caused such a stunned silence. I made the local legal rag as the only person ever to have rendered this lawyer speechless.

Has “jobsworth” not reached the States yet? You must have them – a petty official who insists on sticking to the rules and regulations even where they are clearly irrelevant to a particular situation. Derived from “it’s more than my job’s worth to [deviate from the rule book]…..”

Named for / named after. There is a fair amount of discussion about these variants elsewhere on the internet. As a Brit I was brought up to say that little Jimmy was named after his grandpa. The US “named for” just sounds weird to me. But recently “named for” has become more and more common in British usage. I wonder: is the reverse true? (Compare “the next several days” – which I “corrected” to “the next few days” in my Norwegian students’ essays until I discovered that it was an Americanism. It too is creeping into British usage.)

I do notice that Britons always pronounce “wrath” as “roth”… even if they come from the North Country where many such “a” words are changed to flat/short “a” (like dance, laugh, pass, France, path, etc.)

I recently was bemused to hear a British narrator in a doco refer to that “famous American Steinbeck novel, THE GRAPES OF ROTH”.

There would be plenty of American listeners, I suspected, who would not know what novel he was referring to…

There’s a Marx Brothers film set partly, I think, in Oxford, that includes the following exchange or something like it:
Secretary: ‘Sir, the Dean’s outside and he’s waxing wrath!’
Groucho: ‘Well, let Roth wax the Dean for a while’
Given what you say, the joke wouldn’t work with US speakers.

When did Britons stop saying “la-BORE-a-tree” for “laboratory”? The sort of pronunciation I used to hear Basil Rathbone saying in 1940’s movies… but young Britons now say “LAB-ra-tor-ee”, American style.